The Life and Work of William Tindale

by William Barrett Cooper

He proceeded to Cologne, where there was every facility for printing. He had the first parts of the New Testament in 4to. ready for the press. Enemies, however, were around and alert. Circumspection and secrecy were essential. The work progressed. The printer had got as far as the first ten sheets when a restless and resolute enemy, Cochlaeus, having ferreted the secret from one of the workmen in his cups, obtained authority to put a stop to the work. Tindale managed to secure his property and left the city. He escaped up the Rhine to safety in the city of Worms; where reformation was in power, and where he could continue his work with new feelings of security.

Here, then, he lost no time in resuming his work.

PAGE OF 1525 OCTAVO.
New Testament.

He found a sympathetic printer in P. Schoeffer. Tindale appears to have rearranged his plans. Possibly he had ascertained that Cochlaeus, balked of victory at the very last, had with vindictive cunning sent letters to England giving full particulars of the kind of volume that was in the making: (It was to be a 4to. with notes and comments) and urging the authorities to guard against its being smuggled into the country. Tindale forestalled that enemy. It was not a 4to. volume which he now designed at Worms, but an 8vo. volume; and this had neither note nor gloss. It would seem that alongside of this, but at more leisurely pace, the 4to. also was completed, very likely in the same printing house. Both volumes bear the stamp of the same year of issue, 1525. The two editions were successfully conveyed to England; so that the immediate effect of the attack was to issue two editions instead of one—6,000 volumes instead of 3,000. A skilful system of Colportage carried these books all over England. Before the books arrived, the King had a second warning. Edward Lee, afterwards Archbishop of York, was then on the Continent, and dating his letter from Bordeaux, December 2nd, 1525, he says: "Please it Your Highness to understand that I am certainly informed as I passed in this country that an Englishman, your subject, at the solicitation and instance of Luther with whom he is, hath translated the New Testament into English, and within a few days intendeth to arrive with the same imprinted in England. I need not to advertize Your Grace what infection and danger may ensue hereby if he be not withstanded. This is the next way to fulfil your realm with Lutherians." Then he adds: "All our forefathers, Governors of the Church of England, hath with all diligence, forbid and eschewed publication of English Bibles, as appeareth in Constitutions Provincial of the Church of England."

The news had travelled far before reaching Lee, and was inaccurate at that: but the swiftness with which it reached him was proof of the excitement which Cochlaeus' discovery had created.

More interesting and more accurate is a notice which occurs in the diary of a German scholar,[2] some four months earlier in time. He says: "One told us at the dinner table that 6,000 copies of the English Testament had been printed at Worms: that it was translated by an Englishman who lived there with two of his countrymen. He was so complete a master of seven languages—Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, English and French—that you would fancy whichever one he spoke was his mother tongue." He adds that the English, in spite of the opposition of the King, were so eager for the Gospel, as to affirm they would buy a New Testament even if they had to give a hundred thousand pieces of money for it.

While the enemy raged, the presses abroad were not idle. Additional editions were printed to take the place of those destroyed. They were conveyed with the same success to English ports. In less than five years six editions had been published, three of them surreptitiously. They numbered perhaps fifteen thousand copies in all, and were distributed to eager purchasers by the same formidable organization of colportage.

Nor was Tindale idle. He had foreseen the tactics of his foes. He kept steadfastly at work. He revised his translation of the New Testament, and he proceeded to turn the Old Testament into the English speech; the Pentateuch, the historical books as far as Chronicles, the book of Jonah he completed. In 1536 he was able to send the manuscript of his revised New Testament to England, and there it was put upon the press. That was the first volume of Holy Scripture to be printed on English soil.